eli5 What’s the difference between AC and DC currents?
In: Engineering
DC (direct current) is always in the same direction. It’s like you have a pipe full of marbles, and you tilt it so the marbles all go running the same way. (The pipe is a wire, and the marbles are electrons.)
AC (alternating current) keeps reversing direction. That’s like you have a pipe, and you rock it back and forth so all the marbles run to the left, and then they stop and run back to the right, then back left, and so on. In theory with an isolated AC lightbulb the same electron could run back and forth through the bulb thousands of times.
Mushroomfields makes a good point – batteries deliver DC, and generators produce AC. (You can convert AC into DC, using a device called a rectifier, and you can turn DC back into AC using an inverter.)
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